Torture: A Bush Official’s Public Musings Undermine National Security

Military official Susan Crawford, in a Washington Post front-pager on torture released Wednesday, stated that she believed aggressive interrogation methods used against the “20th hijacker” amounted to torture. The reader can read the article and decide whether the acts constitute torture under Title 18, U.S.C. sec. 2340 (1995), which governs America’s implementation of the UN Convention Against Torture (1985). Crawford, designated by Defense Secretary Gates in 2007 as convening authority on military commissions, surely is entitled to her opinion, and it is an expert one. The WP reports what she said:

Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani’s health led to her conclusion. “The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge” to call it torture, she said.

Crawford, to her credit, states bluntly how dangerous she thinks the 20th hijacker was–and still is. Th WP reports:

“There’s no doubt in my mind he would’ve been on one of those planes had he gained access to the country in August 2001,” Crawford said of Qahtani, who remains detained at Guantanamo. “He’s a muscle hijacker. . . . He’s a very dangerous man. What do you do with him now if you don’t charge him and try him? I would be hesitant to say, ‘Let him go.’ “

She added, the WP reports:

That, she said, is a decision that President-elect Barack Obama will have to make. Obama repeated Sunday that he intends to close the Guantanamo center but acknowledged the challenges involved. “It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize,” Obama said on ABC’s “This Week,” “and we are going to get it done, but part of the challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained, many of whom may be very dangerous, who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication. And some of the evidence against them may be tainted, even though it’s true.”

The reader may read the 3-pager for more detail about the interrogation treatment, and decide if the treatment amounted to torture under the American law cited above. In the event, the current interrogations procedure prohibit the treatment used in 2002 & 2003.

But to me that answer is beside the point. Crawford thinks that such treatment undermines our moral authority to criticize others and endangers our troops when captured, who may be tortured as a result.

I am willing to credit her with patriotic motive in coming forward in public–patriotism is a state of mind, and reflects love. Whether one loves wisely is another matter. A person can do harm to her country unintentionally, committing acts done when motivated by love. Crawford has, in my view, done so.

Muhammad al-Qhatani’s interrogation took place at Gitmo, from Nov. 2002 to Jan. 2003; he was held in isolation until April 2003. So we are talking about acts committed–by officials who thought they were acting under lawful authority–more than six years ago.

Here, in a nutshell, are Crawford’s errors:

1. Speaking out while still holding her official position. She should have resigned and then written her book then.

2. Throwing this mud in the closing phase of the President she worked for, and on the eve of a new administration whose President has enough problems on his desk already.

3. Terrorist adversaries will torture our captives even if we treat every detainee with room service at the Ritz. So will other Geneva non-compliant adversaries (like North Korea, North Vietnam, etc.)

4. Geneva-compliant adversaries, if we ever fight one, will not assume that our use of aggressive interrogation against terrorist detainees means that we will mistreat their troops, and thus will not be motivated to torture our troops.

5. The certain consequence of Crawford’s going public is to complicate the task of the new President is deciding what interrogation techniques to allow.

6. To allow how we treated a detainee six years ago to become a public issue, when so much remains to be done in this war, is dangerous and foolish. It is a distraction we do not need.

7. The notion that we are irremediably tainted if we mistreat one or more detainees is nonsense. By that standard we were morally compromised in World War II and other wars. Errors of judgment do not compromise us morally against adversaries who behead captives with pen-knives, apply electric drills to the body and gouge out eyes. This is monumental inability to distinguish degrees of moral responsibility. Yes, we should behave better than the terrorists–AND WE DO.

8. A prolonged public debate over torture continues an American tradition of airing our sins in public. No other country subjects its intelligence and defense agencies to this kind of public scrutiny. The certain consequences of this will be to inflict damage on our ability to fight aggressively against an enemy whose determination to destroy us is manifest and unrelenting.

We nearly fatally wounded the CIA in the 1970s; the Agency still has not fully recovered from such moralist excess, and may never succeed in doing so. We do not need a repeat episode. Thanks to Crawford’s foolish act, we may do so again.